Business Overview:

If you love treasure hunting and are looking for a unique business idea, you should consider storage unit auctions. There are over 51,000 self-storage unit facilities in the U.S. with over 2 billion square feet of storage space. Unfortunately, not everyone can pay the bills to keep their things stored. That’s where auctions come in. Storage facility operators need to recover lost rent income so they will hold a storage unit auction to clear it out in order to be able to rent it to someone else. Auctions are held each month for an estimated 100,000 storage units. That’s a lot of items! And these items can be purchased at auction for pennies on the dollar and then resold for a huge profit. You can purchase the contents of an entire storage unit or you can purchase individual items from a unit; it depends on how the auction is set up. Either way, there is a big business opportunity in storage unit auctions. You can buy items and sell them at garage sales and estate sales. Or, if you prefer to work from home, you can list your newly acquired treasures on eBay (or any online sales site) and sell to buyers across the country. This is a massive untapped market and there is plenty of room for new business owners. As your business grows, you can even hire a staff to scope out auctions across your town or across the country.

A Day in the Life of a storage unit content sales business owner:

This article brought to you by Business Ideas! If you enjoyed this article, make sure to subscribe to the Business Ideas Newsletter to get ideas sent straight to your email inbox.A typical day for a storage unit content sales business owner will begin with a check of your calendar to see if any auctions will be taking place that day. Next, you might contact local storage facilities to see if they have any upcoming auctions. You’ll mark those on your calendar and get in touch with the facility operators for details about how the auction will work. If you have items that need to be listed online, you’ll focus on that next. If you have a garage sale coming up, you’ll spend some time pricing items and getting the proper permits. Then you might move on to check your online sales to see if you need to ship any items to buyers. You may spend some time each day checking your finances to make sure you have enough money to purchase items at upcoming auctions. You’ll want to be sure to record any income in your financial software. Finally, if you have staff working for you, you’ll make sure their auction schedules are correct and talk to them about particular items you want them to be on the lookout for.

About Your Customers:

Your customers will be anyone looking for your items. They can be walk-up customers at a garage sale or online customers shopping on an auction website.

What You Need to Start:

• Computer
• Finance software
• Vehicle (with trailer for larger items)
• Permits (if holding garage sales)

The Good:

• This is a large untapped market.
• Start up costs are low.
• Return on investment is extremely high.
• You can easily do this job part time and from your home.

The Bad:

• A good deal of footwork is required to stay on top of the auctions.
• Loading up and transporting larger items can be exhausting.

Resources:

• Wikipedia on Self Storage
• Self Storage Association

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